I have written before about the risks of misusing business intelligence software and misinterpreting business intelligence data results. To help avoid these and many other business risks, organizations should encourage employees to be “intelligently disobedient.”
This term is from a great article by The Leader as a Mensch author Bruna Martinuzzi which cleverly presents this highly beneficial trait:
I once worked for a technology company that encouraged employees to practice what they called “Intelligent Disobedience.” The concept originates from Seeing Eye dogs: while dogs must learn to obey the commands of a blind person, they must also know when they need to disobey commands that can put the owner in harm’s way, such as when a car is approaching.
Intelligent disobedience is not about setting out to be disagreeable or arbitrarily disobeying rules for its own sake. Rather, it is about using your judgment to decide when, for example, an established rule actually hinders your organization, rather than helps it…the antonym of intelligent disobedience is blind conformity.
That blind conformity, all too rampant in weakly-run organizations with executives preoccupied with loyalty, can rear its head any number of ways, including using business intelligence/business performance management software to “do the wrong things right.” Blind conformity can also result in incuriously sticking to conventional wisdom within product marketing or product management, resulting in, for example, a preoccupation with competitors instead of actively differentiating your products from the market.
Bruna Martinuzzi offers a number of ideas to encourage cultivating an environment of intelligent disobedience, several of which are directly applicable to the wise interpreter of business intelligence data, as well as product marketers and product managers, including the following…

Posted by Mike Urbonas 






